Reduce Costs with a New Website

We know that marketing can be a strange and at times unpredictable beast, with changes in trends catching those with vested interests off guard, while at times shifts can be easy to predict. The approaches that we take in marketing the products and services that we offer and the way in which we as consumers react to shifting marketing trends and methods, are continuously evolving, taking into account the latest technologies and how people are happy to be sold to. In this modern age web marketing is king. Advertising over the internet has become a solid and reliable marketing standard for almost every business to the point that now; not having an online presence can actually be detrimental and even using a website solely to let people know who you are and where you’re located is beneficial. Online advertising, particularly through a new website is important to your marketing strategy, it actually can be a money saving avenue of marketing, which we will explore in this article.

The Limitations of Print Marketing

It’s important to consider all options when planning out your marketing campaign, and sometimes focussing in on just one medium can be dangerous. Whilst print advertising doesn’t have the same level of impact that it did in years gone by, print marketing still has its place. Physical marketing materials can be very effective, and placing adverts in local newspapers can be highly beneficial to a local business as they focus on your nearby potential client base. Just keep in mind that print advertising is limited. There’s only so much space in newspapers, on billboards and for posters and leaflets to go on show, and this space is usually only available at a premium, so depending on the level of print advertising that you have in mind, it can be quite costly. Print advertising also has the shortcoming in that it’s limited; essentially wherever you choose to advertise, your efforts will likely only be visible for a short amount of time, and you can pay quite a lot of money for such little exposure.

The Limitations of Radio Marketing

Radio advertising has the same benefit as print advertising, in that it can be directed both locally and nationally depending on your budget, and whilst radio adverts can reach a large or focussed audience; radio adverts still have limitations. Whilst with the advent of streamed radio many listeners have the option to listen to their favourite show when it pleases them, many people still listen to radio live as it is broadcast. This means that depending on how much money you’re willing to invest in radio marketing your advert will likely only be heard for a brief time and only by those who have tuned in at that specific moment. Of course radio advertising is still a valid form of marketing if you put enough money into it, but it’s important to be aware of who your market will be, as many younger demographics no longer listen to the radio, instead favouring online streaming alternatives such as last.fm, Spotify and Apple Music.

The Limitations of TV Marketing

We can’t talk about marketing opportunities without mentioning poor old television. TV has been is steady decline for many years, with more and more people moving away from traditional live broadcast TV in favour of online instantly available alternatives such as YouTube, Netflix, Amazon and many more. Many of these streaming services rely on subscription models and don’t have any advertising space available at all. One of the pitfalls of TV advertising is the rise in popularity of Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) such as TiVo, Sky Plus and other less standardised machines. If you’ve missed this particular technological development these devices allow people to record live broadcast TV and watch it whenever they please. If you talk to anyone that owns one; they’ll likely tell you that one of the greatest advantage of these machines is the ability to fast forward through adverts. Aside from these issues and the fact that TV viewing numbers are in steady decline, TV still reaches a large number of people, but it’s important to be aware that the demographics have changed and in this day and age the majority of people who make purchases as the result of TV marketing tend to be over 60, so keep in mind your demographic if you want to consider TV advertising. Like Radio advertising TV marketing has its limitations; it can only reach people who are tuned in at a specific time and there are high premiums if you want to advertise during prime viewing times.

Web Marketing Versus the Limitations

There are many alternatives to these three pillars of traditional marketing but in this article we’re going to focus on the benefits of web marketing, specifically using a new website to advertise your business. If you haven’t considered web marketing before there are a few things that you should be aware of: You don’t necessarily need to sell your products or services online, however there are numerous ecommerce options available to you if you do. One of the simplest functions a website can serve is to advertise your business and make your brand and your products or services known to a near limitless number of people. You can achieve this through publishing blog articles that explain your business in more depth than a newspaper adverts allow, by producing podcasts that give you unlimited time to talk about your products and services, and by filming online videos that can be as long or short as you desire, which offer quite a contrast to the limitations of traditional TV adverts. The biggest advantage in shifting your efforts and marketing budget to online alternatives to traditional marketing avenues is that as well as the aforementioned limitations being lifted, you also exponentially increase the amount of time that your advertising efforts can be seen and heard. Provided that you keep your website up to date it can essentially stay online for as long as the internet exists. You don’t have to worry about the same concerns that come with print media wherein eventually your article will be thrown away along with a newspaper or magazine, or with TV marketing where your advert can be fast forwarded through, or with radio marketing where your advert can be missed altogether by your target audience. Your website and your company message can be visible for as long as you want.

Your Website can Reach a Wider Audience

One of the other limitations of more traditional advertising methods that you can escape through web marketing is the number of people in your prospective audience. Your website has the capability of reaching almost everyone in the UK and around the world with an internet connection, so unless you’re targeting people that will be stuck behind a firewall that limits their internet access to the rest of the world, absolutely anyone can view your website. This allows you the opportunity of either broadening your target demographic, or depending on your strategy better target potential clients. This does require a level of outreach, and a website alone won’t necessarily mean that you’ll reach hoards of people without some degree of web marketing to help it along, but provided that you invest from the start in a well designed website that is well coded from the ground up and incorporates some Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) elements, you have the potential to reach far more people than other forms of advertising ever could, and the real advantage is that you could do it all for less.

Reduce Your Marketing Spending

One of the big advantages that a website has over print, radio and TV advertising is that rather than paying out a large sum of money for a brief advert on a platform such as in a newspaper or on the radio or TV; your website is the advertising platform. While this doesn’t mean that there isn’t a cost involved in this process like there is in paying to be advertised through print, radio or TV, it’s important to keep in mind that your initial costs ensures that you have a fully functioning website that clearly demonstrates your company message and advertises your products and/or services clearly. Once you have made this initial payment you don’t necessarily need to pay towards design and development again unless you want to make significant changes to your site or update your Content Management System (CMS). Essentially your only ongoing costs, aside from the aforementioned updates, are your hosting costs, which compared to print, radio and TV advertising can be considerably lower.

Boost Your Success with an SEO Campaign

Whilst your website can reach a near limitless number of people, so can everyone else’s website, which is why an SEO campaign is worth considering. Effectively the goal of an SEO campaign is to increase the visibility of your website, make it stand out from the crowd by gaining higher ranking positions on Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and ensure that more potential clients find their way to your website. The SEO campaigns that we run at MB Web aren’t just focussed on getting large numbers of people to your website, but to ensure that relevant people find their way to you so that those clicks turn into clients. An SEO campaign isn’t essential to the success of your website, but it vastly improves the effectiveness of any well designed and developed site.

Talk to the Experts

At MB Web we have years of experience in marketing and branding for clients across a vast array of sectors. We have experience working in print and TV advertising, and we’ve seen how trends have shifted to favour web marketing, and in turn our focus has shifted to support this. Our team are highly skilled and experienced in designing websites and marketing materials that fit the branding and image of your company, and we ensure that we develop our websites to ensure that they’re secure, functional and serve an intended purpose. Our SEO team ensure that we provide you with exceptionally high quality copy and use the most up to date SEO techniques to improve the visibility of your website, and make sure that you see a great return on your investment.
If you want to find out how we at MB Web can help you to make better use of your marketing budget, don’t hesitate to contact us today and we will gladly discuss what we can do for you. You can contact James Golding by completing our online contact form, by sending an email to hello@juddassoc.com or by calling our Lewes office on 01273 478822 to speak to a friendly member of the team.